As I ploughed through this semi-autobiographical behemoth about an author and travel writer obsessed with his siblings and mother, I tried to imagine what a hapless editor might have had to say about the manuscript. ‘I like the way you, I mean Jay the narrator, makes the point that your, sorry his, mother is just like a scheming medieval queen, but I think you can assume readers willing to tackle 500-page literary novels will remember, so you don’t need to keep saying it, especially since the idea’s implied in the title,’ such a person might begin.
‘Likewise, the idea that the siblings interact like members of cannibal tribes that Jay encounters on his travels. So funny and apt, but just the one mention will do. Going forward, there’s a lot of telling rather than showing. Perhaps you could actually dramatise some of this? And regarding the length, I love the Mr Bones flashback bit, where Jay’s timid father briefly comes alive while acting in a minstrel show, but apart from that, do we even need the first 200 pages? After all, the story only really gets going with the discovery of adult Charlie, the firstborn Jay sent out for adoption.
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